We can, however, say how it must come. It will not be a sudden stoppage, but a gradual exhaustion indicated by progressive diminution of supply. We shall not be suddenly deprived of this important source of light and cheerfulness; but we may at any time begin to feel the pinch of scarcity and consequent rise of price. This rise of price will check the demand, and bring forth other supplies from sources that now cannot be profitably worked on account of the cheapness of American petroleum.
Many of the countries now largely supplied from America have oil-springs of their own, which a rise of price will speedily bring into paying operation.
We have nothing to fear. The fact that in spite of the ruinous prices that have recently prevailed the Scotch oil-makers continue to exist at all, shows us what they may do with a rise of even a few pence per gallon. The thickness and area of the dark shales from which their oil is distilled are so great that their exhaustion is very far remote indeed. The Americans have similar shales to fall back upon when the spontaneous product ceases to flow, but they are quite incapable of competing with us at home on equal terms—that is, when both have to obtain the oil as a manufactured product of artificial distillation.
If anything like moderation were possible in America, the first indications of scarcity would be followed by some economy in working; but this is not to be anticipated. It is more likely that the first rise of prices will attract additional speculation, and the sinking of more wells in the hope of large profits, and this of course will shorten the period of gradual exhaustion, the commencement of which may, for aught we know, be very near at hand, especially if the new projects for using petroleum as furnace fuel under steam boilers, and for the smelting, puddling, and founding of iron and other metals, are carried out as they may be so easily at present prices, and with the aid of pipe-lines to carry the crude or refined oil from the wells to any part of the great American continent where it may be required in large quantities.
The old story of the goose that laid the golden eggs seems to be in course of repetition in Transatlantic Petrolia.
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Since the above was written I have received from Dr. Sterry Hunt a copy of his interesting “Chemical and Geological Essays,” in one of which he expounds a theory of the origin of petroleum. He states that it appears to him “that the petroleum, or rather the materials from which it has been formed, existed in the limestone rocks from the time of their first deposition,” and “that petroleum and similar bitumens have resulted from a peculiar transformation of vegetable matters, or in some cases of animal tissues analogous to these in composition.”
The objections on page 275 apply to the animal tissues of this theory, and as regards the vegetable matter I think it fails from the want of anything like an adequate supply in these limestone rocks.